Suit: Black passenger insulted, ordered off Greyhound in Oakland

A woman filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Greyhound after she said she was kicked off a bus and called a racial epithet.

A woman filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Greyhound after she said she was kicked off a bus and called a racial epithet.

Photo: John L. White, S-S

Photo: John L. White, S-S

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A woman filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Greyhound after she said she was kicked off a bus and called a racial epithet.

A woman filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Greyhound after she said she was kicked off a bus and called a racial epithet.

Photo: John L. White, S-S

Suit: Black passenger insulted, ordered off Greyhound in Oakland

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A Greyhound bus driver ordered a San Francisco woman to the back of the bus, called her a racial epithet and had a security guard escort her off, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Alameda County Superior Court.

The civil rights complaint details a series of racist incidents two years ago against passenger Toni Young, who is African American, by bus driver Cynthia Lara, who appeared to be white. Since the incident, in April 2014, Young’s lawyer said she has suffered psychological trauma, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety. The lawsuit is seeking punitive damages from the bus company.

Greyhound officials said they were unable to provide any information or answer questions about the incident because of the pending litigation.

“It was shocking to me that we have an incident like this reminiscent of the Rosa Parks incident many years ago,” said Michael Adams, the attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Young.

Adams pointed to a widely condemned incident last year in which a group of African American women were kicked off a Napa Valley Wine Train for laughing and talking too loudly, spurring the hashtag #LaughingWhileBlack.

“Society seems to be backsliding,” he said.

Young, 45, had boarded the bus at the San Francisco station and was on her way to Sacramento for a family celebration. She transferred at the Oakland station and took a seat at the front of the bus.

That’s when Lara, the driver, told her she had to get up because the bus was expecting an elderly woman to board at Sacramento, Adams said. Young explained that she was getting off at Sacramento so the matter was irrelevant, but the driver insisted she get up anyway.

“My client quietly said to her, ‘You don’t have to have an attitude about this,’” Adams said, paraphrasing the exchange.

As Young was complying and getting out of her seat, Lara then “loudly asserted that she did not have any attitude,” the complaint said, and called for a security guard to remove Young from the bus. The lawsuit alleges that Lara then “loudly muttered” the racial epithet.

The security guard escorted Young off, where she waited at the Oakland station for several hours for the next bus. She asked the guard for paperwork to file a complaint, but he said they were out of forms, Adams said. She also asked to speak with the station manager, but the guard told her the manager was not at the station.

By the time Young reached Sacramento, the family celebration was over.

“It was the most dehumanizing incident of my life,” said Young, who runs a San Francisco cookie shop with her mother. “I will never ride a Greyhound bus again.”